The Liberal Attack on the Bible

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• The Liberal Attack on the Bible
• The Seventeenth Century Battle over Reason
• A. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651),
• disputes Mosaic authorship of the
• Pentateuch.

B. Spinoza says treat the Bible like any
other book. C. Pierre Bayle,
Dictionnaire historique et critique
(1697), says the Bible is unreasonable.
1) Catholics and Protestants interpret the
text differently. 2) David, the
man after Gods own heart, was a
murdering brigand.
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D. John Locke, The Reasonableness of
Christianity (1695), says that what is not
reasonable is not Christianity. E. John Toland,
Christianity Not Mysterious (1696), says that
no mystery comes from God and eliminates the
parts of the NT which seemed mysterious to
him.
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• The Liberal Attack on the Bible
• The Seventeenth Century Battle over Reason
• Is the Bible reasonable?

Authority
No Bayle Accept it by faith
Yes Locke Toland
Remove all that seems unreasonable
No Tertullian Accept it by faith
Yes Justin Thomas
Interpret it allegorically
Authority
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• The Liberal Attack on the Bible
• The Eighteenth Century Take it or leave it
• A. Attack on prophecy
• Anthony Collins, Discourse of the Grounds and
  Reasons of the Christian Religion (1724),
  says that Xty depends on prophecy, and since
  the NT misinterprets OT prophecy, Xty is false.
• B. Attack on miracles
• Thomas Woolston, Discourses on the Miracles of
  our Saviour (1729), says miracles are morally
  absurd so they must be taken allegorically.

It is difficult to know what to make of the
Discourses. They do not read like the arguments
of a sane man .
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The Liberal Attack on the Bible C. Attack on
particularity Matthew Tindal, Christianity as
Old as Creation (1730), asks who can believe
the Great Creator revealed himself to a
barbaric tribe in an obscure corner of the world
through outrageous laws and unbelievable
stories?
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• The Liberal Attack on the Bible
• The Eighteenth Century Take it or leave it
• D. Attack on the resurrection
• Peter Annet, The Resurrection of Jesus
  Examined by a Moral Philosopher (1744), says
  the narratives are hopelessly contradictory,
  the apostles completely unreliable, and the
  event wholly incredible.

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The Liberal Attack on the Bible E. Attack on
Christianity 1) David Hume, An Inquiry
Concerning Human Understanding (1777), says
the proof against a miracle, from the very
nature of the fact, is as entire as any
argument from experience can possibly be
imagined. 2) Edward Gibbon, The History
of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
(1776-88), uses irony and sarcasm to discount
the supernatural origin of Xty.
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• The Liberal Attack on the Bible
• The Eighteenth Century Take it or leave it
• 3) Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason (1793),
  The Bible is a history of wickedness that
  has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.
• 4) Voltaire, in various works, called the
  Bible an absurd and sanguinary creed,
  supported by executions and surrounded by
  fiery faggots.

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• The Liberal Attack on the Bible
• The Eighteenth Century Take it or leave it
• Because the Bible contains altered prophecy,
  absurd miracle stories, immoral tribal sagas, and
  an impossible resurrection, it is a bad book
  written by bad men. Christianity must be
  rejected.
• Every one of these charges is false and can be
  refuted the Bible comes from God. Christianity
  is intellectually sound.

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• The Liberal Attack on the Bible
• The Nineteenth Century Attempts to avoid Take
  it or leave it
• A. Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion
  Speeches to its Cultured Despisers (1798),
  seeks to reestablish the authority of Xty by
  taking it out of the realm of history and
  redefining it as the feeling of dependence.
  Jesus is our model and savior because he was
  the most God- conscious man.
• This is the beginning of liberalism The
  Bible is a good human word about God.

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• The Liberal Attack on the Bible
• The Nineteenth Century Attempts to avoid Take
  it or leave it
• B. Higher Criticism
• Who wrote the Bible? When? Why? What does
  it mean?
• The Bible is not the word of God but is the
  human record of what God revealed.
• Read the Bible in the light of philosophical
  naturalism and faith in evolutionary
  development.
• When rightly understood in terms of its
  origin, the Bible is neither immoral nor absurd.

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• The Liberal Attack on the Bible
• The Nineteenth Century Attempts to avoid Take
  it or leave it
• B. Higher Criticism
• 1) Jean Astruc, Conjectures sur les mémoires
  originaux dont il paroit que Moyse sest
  servi pour composer le livre de la Genèse
  (1753), argues from Yahweh and Elohim that
  there are two sources to Genesis.
• 2) D. F. Strauss, Leben Jesu (1835), says the
  NT contains both historical facts and
  religious ideas, but gives no way to tell one
  from the other.

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• The Liberal Attack on the Bible
• The Nineteenth Century Attempts to avoid Take
  it or leave it
• B. Higher Criticism
• 3) F. C. Baur uses Tendenz-kritik to discern
  fact from theology by asking, What point is
  the author trying to make?
• 4) Thomas Arnold, Essay on the Right
  Interpretation and Understanding of the
  Scriptures (1831), says not to confound ones
  reading of the Bible with questions of
  science, of history, and of criticism. The
  Bible has truth but is not true.

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• The Liberal Attack on the Bible
• The Nineteenth Century Attempts to avoid Take
  it or leave it
• 5) Bishop John William Colenso, Pentateuch and
  Book of Joshua Critically Examined (1862-79),
  questions the historical accuracy and
  traditional authorship of these books.

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• The Liberal Attack on the Bible
• The Nineteenth Century Attempts to avoid Take
  it or leave it
• 6) Ernest Renan, Vie de Jésus (1863),
  popularizes higher criticism and has a
  non-supernatural Jesus die a noble death.
• 7) Karl Graf, Die Geschichilichen Bücherdes
  Alten Testaments (1866), and Julius
  Wellhausen, Prolegomena zur Geschichte
  Israels (1878), argued the documentary
  hypothesis for the Pentateuch (J, E, P, D).

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• The Liberal Attack on the Bible
• The Nineteenth Century Attempts to avoid Take
  it or leave it
• 8) William Robertson Smith, Bible in the
  Encyclopedia Britannica (c. 1876), argues
  that the Bible is not the word of God but it
  contains it. In Gods revelation of himself
  in human history error and imperfection are
  inevitable.
• 17th century Trust your reason, and throw out
  the objectionable parts of the Bible.
• 18th century Throw out the Bible!
• Throw out Christianity!
• 19th century The real Bible has no objectionable
  parts.

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The Liberal Attack on the Bible H. P. Liddon,
Chancellor of St. Pauls Cathedral in London
(1889) For Christians it will be enough to know
that our Lord Jesus Christ set the seal of his
infallible sanction on the whole of the Old
Testament. He found the Hebrew canon as we have
it in our hands today, and he treated it as an
authority which was above discussion. Nay more
he went out of his wayif we may reverently speak
thusto sanction not a few portions of it which
modern skepticism rejects. When he would warn
his hearers against the dangers of spiritual
relapse, he bids them remember Lots wife.
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The Liberal Attack on the Bible H. P. Liddon,
Chancellor of St. Pauls Cathedral in London
(1889) When he would point out how worldly
engagements may blind the soul to coming
judgment, he reminds them how men ate, and drank,
and married, and were given in marriage, until
the day that Noah entered into the ark, and the
flood came and destroyed them all. If he would
put his finger on a fact in past Jewish history
which by its admitted reality, would warrant
belief in his own coming resurrection, he points
to Jonahs being three days and three nights in
the whales belly.
Jesus trusted the Bible and so should we.
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If the trustworthiness of our Lord Jesus Christ
is to stand or fall with the belief in the sudden
transformation of the chemical compounds of a
womans body into sodium chloride, or on the
admitted reality of Jonahs ejection, safe and
sound, on the shores of the Levant, after three
days sea-journey in the stomach of a gigantic
marine animal, what possible pretext can there be
for even hinting a doubt as to the precise truth
of the longevity attributed to the Patriarchs?
T. H. Huxley
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Who that has swallowed the camel of Jonahs
journey will be guilty of the affectation of
straining at such a historical gnatnay, midgeas
the supposition that the mother of Moses was told
the story of the Flood by Jacob who had it
straight from Shem who was on friendly terms
with Methuselah who knew Adam quite well?
T. H. Huxley
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Take it or Leave itAll or NothingDeal or No
Deal Lidden

Huxley
F. W. Farrar 1885 No conception more subversive
of Scriptural authority has ever been devised
than the assertion that in the Bible we must
accept everything or nothing. What the combined
effort of Deism, Rationalism, and Evolution had
failed to achieve had been accomplished by the
patient labors of the theologians themselves.
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I read Mr. Jenyns's admired tract, on the
"Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion." He
is undoubtedly a fine writer but whether he is a
Christian, Deist, or Atheist, I cannot tell. If
he is a Christian, he betrays his own cause by
averring, that "all Scripture is not given by
inspiration of God but the writers of it were
sometimes left to themselves, and consequently
made some mistakes."
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This book is not the work of some enthusiast or
Methodist, some beggar, or some madman. ... the
Scriptures are not revelations from God, but the
history of them. The revelation itself is
derived from God, but the recording of the
revelation is the production of men. Some of
the Bible comes from God and some comes from
humans. Bultmann
How do you decide which is which? The stories are
human but the morals are divine.
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The writers of Scripture were undoubtedly
directed by supernatural influence in all things
necessary to the great work which they were
appointed to perform ... but in the sciences of
history, astronomy, and philosophy ... they were
... liable to ... errors. The truth of the
Bible is like a diamond in the mud of human
error.
God made sure the Bible is correct in what it
says about what we should believe and how we
should live, but it can be wrong in all other
matters. Roman Catholic
How do you know what is diamond and what is
mud? Faith and morals are the diamond.
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Do the authors of Scripture assert infallibility
for every part of the voluminous collection of
historical, poetical, prophetical, theological,
and moral writings which we call the Bible?
The Bibles
human authors do not claim infallibility. All
Jesus requires for salvation is that one believe
in him.
God made sure the Bible is correct in what it
says about how to be saved, but it can be wrong
in other matters. Fuller Theological Seminary
How do you know what to trust? Acts 1631
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be
saved. All the rest you are free to doubt.
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Nay, if there be any mistakes in the Bible,
there may as well be a thousand. If there be one
falsehood in that book, it did not come from the
God of truth.
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Countless colleges and universities in the
history of the United States were founded under
some sort of Christian patronage, but many which
still survive do not claim any relationship with
a church or denomination. Readers who have seen
this story through thus far will naturally wonder
whether this is the end the end of Christian
colleges and universities. They may be annoyed
with a book that portrays Christian higher
learning as sympathetic yet somehow fated to
succumb. There was, in the stories told here,
little learned rage against the dying of the
light. It is a shame that so much of
yesterdays efforts have become the compost for
those of tomorrow. The failures of the past, so
clearly patterned, so foolishly ignored, and so
lethally repeated, emerge pretty clearly from
these stories.
29
Thomas Arnold, Essay on the Right
Interpretation and Understanding of the
Scriptures (1831), says not to confound ones
reading of the Bible with questions of
science, of history, and of criticism. The
Bible is true, but not truth.
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Dover Beach
Matthew Arnold The sea is calm to-night.The
tide is full, the moon lies fairUpon the
straits -on the French coast the lightGleams
and is gone the cliffs of England
stand,Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil
bay.Come to the window, sweet is the night
air!Only, from the long line of sprayWhere the
sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,Listen! you
hear the grating roarOf pebbles which the waves
draw back, and fling,At their return, up the
high strand,Begin, and cease, and then again
begin,With tremulous cadence slow, and bringThe
eternal note of sadness in. Sophocles long
agoHeard it on the Aegean, and it broughtInto
his mind the turbid ebb and flowOf human misery
weFind also in the sound a thought,Hearing it
by this distant northern sea.
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The Sea of FaithWas once, too, at the full, and
round earth's shoreLay like the folds of a
bright girdle furl'd.But now I only hearIts
melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,Retreating,
to the breathOf the night-wind, down the vast
edges drearAnd naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be trueTo one another! for
the world, which seemsTo lie before us like a
land of dreams,So various, so beautiful, so
new,Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor
light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for
painAnd we are here as on a darkling
plainSwept with confused alarms of struggle and
flight,Where ignorant armies clash by night.
1867
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Fundamentalism 1895 Niagara Bible
Conference 1. The Deity of Christ 2. His
virgin birth and resurrection 3. His
substitutionary atonement 4. His second
coming 5. The authority and inerrancy of the
Bible The Fundamentals 12 books by 64 authors
published between 1910 and 1915 sent to every
theological student and Christian worker in the
US Evangelicalism Billy Graham Carl F H
Henry Harold John Ockenga
National Association of Evangelicals Christianity
Today Park Street Church Fuller Seminary
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• Defections
• 1805 Congregationalists
• 1870s Anglicans, Methodists, Lutherans
• United Presbyterians
• Rescues
• 1969 Missouri Synod Lutherans
• Southern Baptist Convention
• 1989 Free Methodist Church

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Even if you start with an errant Bible You
discover an infallible Jesus Who believes in an
inerrant Bible.
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The mainline churches who accepted higher
criticism are empty. Jesus trusted the Bible and
so should we.
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What are the three main views about the authority
of the Bible? Who advocated them when? Evaluate
their arguments.